Thomas Pilchard

Thomas Pilchard (Pilcher) (born at Battle, Sussex, 1557; executed at Dorchester, 21 March 1587) was an English Roman Catholic priest. He is a Catholic martyr, beatified in 1987 as one of the Eighty-five martyrs of England and Wales, with whom he is commemorated on 4 May.

For the Army officer, see Thomas Pilcher.
Blessed
Thomas Pilchard
Priest and Martyr
Born1557
Battle, Sussex
Died(1587-03-21)21 March 1587
Dorchester
Venerated inRoman Catholicism
(England)
Beatified22 November 1987, Rome, Italy, by Pope John Paul II
Feast4 May

Life

He became a Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, in 1576, and took the degree of M.A., in 1579, resigning his fellowship the following year. He arrived at Reims 20 November 1581, and was ordained priest at Laon, March 1583.[1]

He set out for the English mission on 4 May 1583, and worked in the area of Winchester. He was arrested soon after, and banished. Many of the missionaries were eager to return lest their absence be attributed to some compromise with the government. On 20 January 1586 Pilchard returned to England, and worked for almost a year. In London on business, he was recognised by someone who knew him from Oxford and was arrested early in March 1587, and imprisoned in Dorchester Gaol.[1] Numerous conversions are attributed to him while in prison.

Executions for treason being rare in that part of the county, there was some difficulty finding anyone to carry out the sentence. At length a butcher was persuaded to undertake it for a considerable sum. The rope broke and Pilchard fell to his feet below the gallows. Compelled by the sheriff's men, the hired executioner then stabbed Pilchard, who turned to the sheriff and asked, "Is this then your justice, Mr. Sheriff?"[1]

Thomas Pilchard is commemorated with the Dorset Martyrs memorial on Gallows Hill, Dorchester.[2]

gollark: 1. receive message from future containing the answer to your problem2. check it (this assumes it's one of the easy-to-check hard-to-answer ones)3. send it back
gollark: You can use informational time travel plus the fixed-timeline thing for hypercomputing, which is neat.
gollark: What I think a lot of settings do is have it so that you can transmit information to the past, but you can't edit history at all - what happened to cause the information to be sent, still happens. It's very confusing and can also be used for computation.
gollark: Er, future→past, I mean.
gollark: Any reliable past/future information channel would be data-mined to death, I think.

See also

References
  1. Whitfield, Joseph L., "Venerable Thomas Pilchard", Lives of the English Martyrs, (Edwin H. Burton and J. H. Pollen eds.), London. Longmans, Green and Co., 1914
  2. Dorset Martyrs Memorial, Gallows Hill, Dorchester
Attribution
  •  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Venerable Thomas Pilchard". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
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